


Bed Rest

by pheyne



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-30
Updated: 2011-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-23 06:24:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pheyne/pseuds/pheyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Intellectually, Eames understood that Arthur and injury were destined by fate to meet. His mistake had been in assuming that Arthur would suffer those injuries while at work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bed Rest

Dom reached into his pocket, grasped his totem between his fingertips, and struggled to remember just how he’d gotten here anyway, standing lost at the foot of Arthur’s hospital bed. Slowly, the memories seeped back: planning out the tree house with James when Eames’ phone call came through, the frantic flight from Seattle, the shitty car rental in Philadelphia, and the bizarre midnight drive through endless miles of Pennsylvania farmland, in a fucking biblical downpour no less, until he reached here.

Arthur’s hospital room. Where Arthur sat in his hospital bed, staring back at Dom with a highly annoyed look in his eyes. It wasn’t a dream. Even so, Dom couldn’t help himself. He traced the outline of his totem with his fingertips one more time.

“How did you break your leg again?” he asked.

“He fell off the roof,” Eames supplied, and his answer was as unhelpful as the past three times he’d said it. “Arthur, where the hell are your shoes?”

“How would I know? They ripped everything off me in the emergency room. It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not like I’m going to be wearing them anytime soon. I have a cast on my leg, Eames.”

Eames pulled his head out of Arthur’s room closet where he’d been busy stuffing everything he could reach into the transparent belongings bag so thoughtfully provided by the hospital. He frowned at Arthur with a familiarity that Dom still found jarring.

“I’d say it didn’t suit you but, sadly, peevishness is often your defining characteristic, darling. Why have you not yet changed?”

“I’m not wearing this.”

“Arthur,” Eames sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Dom could sympathize; he’d felt the same way with Arthur countless times over their years of working together. Watching Eames go through the same motions, however, just made everything feel that much more surreal. “I’m absolutely certain that even your senses will survive the momentary break from Dolce fucking Gabbana. Put the t-shirt on.”

Arthur held up the clothing under discussion between his fingertips.

“It’s says ‘Lancaster God’s Country’, Eames. With a goddamn Amish horse and buggy on it. Plus it’s orange. I’d look like a member of a prison road work gang.”

“Arthur—”

“And I’m not even discussing the sweats. What are you planning on doing with two boxes of latex gloves, Eames?”

Eames ignored the question and tossed the boxes into the bag anyway.

“Fine. Brilliant. Don’t wear them, Arthur. I’ll speak with your nurse. I’m certain she would be happy to see you leave wearing that hospital gown and you can concentrate on keeping your modesty intact through luck and positive thinking.”

Dom couldn’t hold back anymore.

“But what were you doing on a roof?” he asked, interrupting the barrage of heated stares the two men were exchanging.

“He was attempting to repair a leak,” Eames snapped. “Despite giving me his word that he would not try any such thing while I was out.”

“I was just trying to clear the area.”

“With shingles and roofing nails?”

“I was bored, Eames! Jesus! I am still allowed to exercise free will and personal judgment, right?! I mean, sleeping with you doesn’t mean I’ve abdicated absolutely all rights to independent thought, does it?”

And there it was. Finally. Disturbing yet fascinating. Unexpected yet curiously not.

“Okay. Wait. Back the bus up.” Dom sliced through the thick air with a decisive swipe of his hand. “Are you two fucking dating?”

Eames snorted and stood. “Dating implies a level of communication that clearly doesn’t currently apply. Let’s just leave it at fucking. I’ll see you two at the car.”

♣

Of course, things only continued to deteriorate from there. When Arthur put on the t-shirt but refused to ride with Eames, Dom wound up hauling him into his rental and following Eames through the winding back roads that apparently led to their house. The miles passed in silence so thick Dom thought he could hear his own heartbeat.

“So.” He cleared his throat and tried again for casual. “You and Eames own a house together.”

Dom said it slowly, rolling each syllable across his tongue as if he were learning a foreign language, because a world where Arthur and Eames had sex on a regular basis still felt pretty damn alien.

“We bought it last year. When Rossetti was on the warpath and we needed a place to hide out for awhile. You’re going to need to turn right up ahead. He always takes that one too sharply and, apparently, they don’t use turn signals in England.”

Dom obeyed with the habit born of long years on the run together. But keeping on point, sometimes to a pathological degree, had always been his problem.

“So you bought a house in Amish country together. To hide out in.”

“It’s not a house. It’s a cabin.”

It’s not a pond. It’s a lake.

“Semantics, Arthur. The key point is—”

“Joint property ownership isn’t a new idea, Dom. It isn’t like we invented the idea of sleeping with co-workers, either.”

Dom couldn’t help feeling immediately defensive. “Alright. Not that I have to explain anything here - I’m not the one who fell off a roof - but Mal and I were still in school when we met.”

The road turned to dirt beneath their tires.

“I wasn’t talking about Mal.”

Shit. Serious shit. Dom glanced at Arthur out of the corner of his eye and found that sharp jaw set even more harshly than normal. Dom didn’t bother denying anything.

“How did you find out?”

“Still questioning my research techniques?” Arthur said wryly. “Ariadne called me when you dumped her.”

“I didn’t dump her.”

“No, you have to be dating first in order to get dumped. From what I managed to get out of her between all the hysterical sobbing, you two just met up in hotel rooms every now and then.”

“That makes it sound like – look, she wanted to learn more about dreamscape architecture and, since Mal wasn’t a problem anymore—”

“So, just to be clear, we’re now absolutely sure that fucking in a dreamscape doesn’t qualify as actually having sex. I’ll be sure to let Eames know.”

Dom laughed. “Yeah, when you’re talking again.”

“Dom, for fuck’s sake, you’re old enough to be her father.”

“Only if I was extremely precocious. Don’t drag the age thing into this, Arthur.”

“Okay. What about the trust thing? From how she talked, Ariadne thought you two had some sort of deeper bond because of whatever the hell it was you decided to share about Mal.”

Dom ignored the hint of betrayal in Arthur’s voice in favor of getting this fucking conversation back on track already.

“Are you saying you suddenly trust Eames now?” he demanded.

They had had this talk many times over the years. Eames’ skills and reputation being what they were, there weren’t many alternatives when a job called for a competent forger with at least a working knowledge of firearms, and Arthur was always the one to raise the issue of trusting the man. Every time. Eames flew solo; it made him both expensive and dangerous.

This time, Arthur opened his mouth and silence came out.

“You do,” Dom breathed. It was a revelation and not a good one. Suddenly, he felt like he’d just lost his best friend.

“Dom—”

“Just how long has this thing with you two been going on?”

“Dom, it’s not – I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you.”

“I get it, Arthur. Not telling me is not the same thing as hiding it from me. Who knew?’

“Dom—”

The dirt road turned into two faint tire paths etched into unmowed grass. Dom had a hard time navigating the potholes for the trees. Also, the grass was still slick from last night’s rain and the car swerved all over the place like a fucking roller skate.

“Who knew, Arthur?”

“I don’t see how this matters but – Ariadne.” Arthur grimaced and glanced out the window. “Yusuf. That was like taking out a front page ad in the New York Times but Eames likes the guy, still considers him a friend despite that whole thing with the Fischer job.”

“But not me.”

“You could have asked. Hell, you could have called. One ‘hey, Arthur. Anything new?’ and I would’ve probably spilled my guts.”

Dom shouldn’t have been surprised that Arthur knew. Knew about his pathetic itch to get back to work after less than three months with the kids. Knew about the Ross job. Knew how well it was not going without Arthur as his point man. Dom blushed.

“It’s okay,” Arthur sighed, dragging his pianist’s fingers through tangled hair that was a shade too long. Probably Eames’ bad influence already at work. “It’s not like we were married. I don’t think of you as cheating on me or something, if that’s what kept you from calling.”

“That wasn’t it.”

“Then what?”

Arthur’s gaze was as steady as always but now it lacked that spark of hero worship, that need to please him, that they’d both always known was there and never acknowledged. Dom knew about Arthur’s preferences in sexual partners, had seen him kick more than one boyfriend to the curb over the years, but if there had ever been anything more than brotherly sentiment in his feelings towards Dom, Dom had always been too chicken shit to ask. Now, he found that he missed the spark more than a little. Maybe he had felt like he was cheating on Arthur after all.

“I made you a promise,” he said eventually, voice hoarse. “That I would quit if we ever made it back stateside.”

“I remember.”

“You never needed to come along for my two year nightmare, Arthur. No one was hunting you down for murder. You stayed with me anyway. Jesus. You missed your dad’s funeral because of me, and I couldn’t even make it three whole months before I was back calling Demetrius about a job.”

“Yeah, well. You should lose his number by the way. Demetrius Ross turned federal informant over job gone south about six months ago. That’s why he can’t find anyone to work with him anymore.”

Except for washed-up extractor/architects looking for a job, any job, like an addict hunting for a hit. Dom felt like a fool.

“I hear Saito’s looking for help again, though,” Arthur went on after only a brief pause. “Straightforward militarization. I’ll get you in touch.”

Arthur smiled, dimples peeking faintly, and Dom’s shoulders felt lighter than they had since he walked off the plane past Fischer in LAX. He smiled back and, clichéd as it sounded, all was right with the world again.

The grass path opened up suddenly into a clearing and Arthur’s smile widened into a grin. He nodded at the wood cabin ahead with its panoramic vistas of Pennsylvania farmland spread out on the hillsides behind it like a wedding train.

“Okay. So, what do you think? Honestly.”

It was a shack. A very tiny shack.

“Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother could have lived here,” Dom said instead.

Of course, Arthur knew him too well and heard all the subtext. He laughed.

“I know, right? Eames found it, of course, and called it a fixer upper. Just like the man.”

Before Dom could say another word, Arthur had scrolled down his window and Eames, who had parked their truck like a stunt driver in a Bond movie, was already reaching in to grab the hospital bag of belongings from Arthur’s lap. Dom parked next to the truck (an F-150 with a gun rack in back, a Mud Life sticker on the windshield, and a fucking polished chrome deer head for a hood ornament for god’s sake) and watched as the two men bickered their way into a hobbling three-legged shuffle to the front door. Apparently, the silent treatment didn’t last very long in this household.

♠

An hour later, Dom wished the silent treatment had lasted at least through dinner. Eames was puttering around a kitchen galley that was smaller than Dom’s walk-in closet back in Seattle. Arthur had been installed on the single sofa in the living room with a quilt and, in lieu of a television, a copy of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (which had to be some strange Eames-ian joke that Dom didn’t get judging from the glare Arthur leveled at the man). Dom sat on a kitchen barstool at the pass-through between the two rooms, nursing his scotch and watching them argue like a demented tennis fan at Wimbledon.

“How is it unreasonable to want a shower?” Arthur demanded, tossing the dog-eared book onto the nearby coffee table.

“Have you seen our bathroom, Arthur? It makes an airplane lavatory look like Shangri-La.” Eames cracked two more eggs into a glass bowl and beat them with a ferocity that had Dom gulping scotch. “I doubt we can get both you and your cast into it at the same time. Besides, I thought they cleaned you up at the hospital before we drove home.”

“That was a bed bath.”

“And?”

“I’ve been in the hospital for a week, Eames. I smell like rotten cabbage. I need more than a sponge-down with some lukewarm water and hand soap.”

“Well, what did your doctor say about your showering fetish?”

“He said I could shower with assistance.”

Eames divided scrambled eggs onto three plates, added toast, and pushed one across the counter to Dom. Eames and Arthur exchanged a long, scorching stare, and Dom found he was holding his breath.

“So?” Eames finally asked.

“So assist,” Arthur replied, undaunted and unblinking.

Eames swore and handed a second plate to Dom who accepted it before he could think better of it.

“Hand that to Princess Arthur, would you, Cobb. I have a bath to draw.”

“Shower,” Arthur corrected. He took the plate and started shoveling up eggs without pause. “You have a shower to draw.”

“How is that even possible in your mind?” Eames muttered, rolling up his shirt sleeves and reaching for the kitchen step stool.

Dom waited until he heard running water in the bathroom next door. Even so, he kept his voice low. That was the thing about cabins that were less than a thousand square feet in size; sound traveled.

“Eames cooks?”

“Hmm,” Arthur mumbled noncommittally around a mouthful of toast.

Dom took a bite of his eggs and revised his opinion. Eames was fucking near a chef.

“Why the hell did we spend all that money on take-out when the man cooks?”

“He doesn’t cook for just anyone.” Arthur waved his fork around, making some sort of point, before rolling his eyes. “You’re now among the elite.”

Dom had just one question. “The green things?”

“Chives. Eames considers them a staple. If you don’t watch him like a hawk at the grocery store, you’ll wind up back home with chives but no sugar – like chives are a fucking sweetener substitute,” Arthur added, two decibels louder than necessary.

Chives. Ham. Freshly shredded cheddar because Dom had watched the man shred the damn cheese himself. He glanced over at Arthur’s plate then and frowned.

No ham. Assuming Eames hadn’t made Arthur’s plate separately simply because absence had made the heart grow fonder—

“Arthur, are you kosher or a vegetarian?”

“Vegetarian,” Eames muttered, stepping back into the room with a towel slung over one shoulder. His jeans were already soaked from the knees down. “Four years of watching that man order take-away and I learned two incontrovertible truths: Arthur has deplorable taste in Chinese food and Arthur is a vegetarian.”

“Nice, Eames.” Arthur finished his dinner without looking up. “There’s nothing wrong with my taste in Chinese food. Dom, tell him.”

Dom was too distracted by a more disturbing thought to answer.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he asked Arthur. He was starting to sound like a soundtrack on endless replay. “I send you a subscription to Omaha Steaks every Christmas.”

Eames cackled. There was no other word for it. Arthur shrugged.

“My mother enjoys it.”

“And on that note,” Eames said with a bitter smile. “Let’s get on with this disaster.”

♥

Intellectually, Eames understood that Arthur and injury were destined by fate to meet. He knew Arthur trained for it and expected it. He knew that Arthur’s painstaking diligence was, at least in part, a reflection of his desire to keep those injuries to a dull roar. In the end, his mistake had been in assuming that Arthur would suffer those injuries while at work. He had not expected to return from food shopping to find the man a crumpled and bleeding heap by the back door.

Now, over a week later, visions of Arthur writhing and delirious from pain were, if not a distant memory, then certainly a little receded from the forefront of Eames’ mind. In their place, he had memories of Arthur pale and strangely defenceless in the grip of pre-surgical anaesthesia, Arthur swearing and flinging Jell-O at the hospital telly, and Arthur nestled comfortably on their sofa and gobbling up scrambled egg. Finally full circle thank fucking Christ. If the price to be paid for that return to normalcy was Dom Cobb in his living room, then Eames was prepared to pay it.

Sex would have had to wait regardless with Arthur’s leg plastered up from ankle to thigh. There were other life-affirming acts they could indulge in. Such as showering.

Disaster might have been over-stating it anyway. Awkward – certainly. Embarrassing – at points (particularly with Cobb just one room over). Effective – debatable. In retrospect, things would have gone much more smoothly if he’d just been able to find a bucket.

“Tell me how this makes sense again,” Arthur grumbled as Eames knelt to place the kitchen step stool in the centre of the shower area.

Eames paused to stare at it. The stool looked low but none of their other chairs would have even fit through the doorway. Arthur should still be able to sit and stretch his casted leg out the shower door. Somewhat satisfied and with space being the premium commodity it was in the bathroom, Eames then had only to shift slightly to reach Arthur’s sweatpants and tug those down before chucking them in front of the sink.

“Are you telling me the hospital aides routinely went starkers when bathing you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then?” Eames stood with his eyes closed before reaching to pull off Arthur’s t-shirt. So far, things were going swimmingly.

“They were giving me bed baths, Eames. This is a shower. Your jeans are already soaked and we haven’t even started. It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before, anyway.”

Eames ignored that statement in favour of hopefully satisfying Arthur’s showering fixation before midnight.

“Right. Just put your arm around my shoulder.”

Eames stretched to reach the shower controls and freezing water spattered them both.

“You were right. This is going to be a disaster,” Arthur agreed with glum assurance as icy water plastered his hair to his scalp.

Minutes later, things had become Much Worse.

“Just give me the fucking soap, Eames,” Arthur huffed in Eames’ ear as they danced around the toppled step stool.

“You couldn’t just sit on the fucking thing like a normal person?” Eames wheezed back as he struggled to keep his grip on Arthur’s seal-slick body. Fortunately or unfortunately, the only way to manage that was to grab the man’s arse with both hands and pull him up flush against Eames’ own admittedly drenched body. The water chose that moment to transition from helpfully cold to unhelpfully warm.

“I was trying to sit on it. You kept getting in the way.”

“You keep believing that, darling.”

“Besides, it was too low – unless your intention actually was to get me as comfortable as possible to blow you in the shower.”

There was absolutely no reply to that and Eames didn’t even try.

“Now what are we supposed to do?” Arthur turned his head and breathed into Eames’ neck. He could feel Arthur’s lips moving against the sensitive skin over his jugular. The heat of the man burned straight to Eames’ already suffering cock. Christ on a fucking stick. Arthur was trying to kill him.

“Take the bloody soap.”

“I can’t reach it.”

“Oh, for the love of god, Arthur!”

Eames turned them until he managed to reach the shampoo bottle and drizzled generous gobs of the white goo all over Arthur’s head. The goo dripped off his scalp and onto his face, into his eyes, across his lips. Eames watched, helplessly mesmerised, as the goo started to foam.

Arthur would have made a fortune in porn.

“This is the worst shower I’ve ever had,” Arthur complained morosely, blinking madly. “Just FYI but that shit stings, Eames.”

“Well, I think I’ve thrown my bloody back out.”

“I told you not to wear your jeans in here.”

“Arthur, I fail to see how my wardrobe choice played any role whatsoever in this tragedy.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“There is absolutely no reasoning with you in this mood.”

“Look, forget it. Just help me rinse this stuff out of my eyes before my eyeballs go up in flames.”

Eames turned them both until Arthur could tilt his face up to the trickling shower head. When Arthur finally opened his goo-free eyes to smile ruefully at Eames, it was a simple thing for Eames to angle his head and lean in until their lips met. Soft. A brush. A welcome home. Something hard and painful in Eames started to unknot.

“I’m sorry your shower was hideous,” he murmured against Arthur’s temple, the coarse feel of Arthur’s cast against his leg a potent reminder of their recent misadventures.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” Arthur replied, ducking to nuzzle behind Eames’ ear. “Was I really such a bear that you had to call Dom?”

Eames laughed softly. “You’re worse with him around, not better, Arthur. You become oppositional and defiant about everything.”

“Then why did you call him?”

Arthur sounded genuinely curious. Eames pulled back to look at him and saw only clear brown eyes staring back.

“Arthur, you scowl every time the phone rings and it isn’t Cobb. You stuck a post-it with his name to the dart board in your flat.”

“Remind me to take that down. The post-it, I mean.”

“The point I’m trying to make is that you’ve been brooding for months, darling. I’ll admit to some jealousy at first—”

“Some?! You accused me of sleeping with the man.”

“Well, finding you in a bloody mess in the backyard cured me of that idiocy. You needed to talk, Arthur. You were running out of diversions to distract you from your unsettled business with Cobb and I honestly can’t live through another roofing episode.”

“Thank you, Eames,” Arthur murmured, tracing the line of a tattoo to where it disappeared beneath the waistband of Eames’ jeans. He suddenly realized that Arthur had been unfastening his shirt as they talked.

“Arthur, this is a poor idea.”

“My leg’s in a cast, Eames. Not my dick.”

“And I would hate to have to explain why it is we need that cast replaced within twenty-four hours of returning home.”

“Home,” Arthur hummed with a happy smile. He wrenched open Eames’ button-fly front. “I like the sound of that. But I love that you think underwear is an optional fashion accessory.”

He reached in.

“Fuck! Arthur—” Eames gasped, head thudding back against the tile when Arthur wrapped his talented fingers around them both and started to stroke. What a lovely way to end a week-long fast.

“Yeah, I know. I don’t think we’re going to make it that far this time, Mr. Eames. Hang on.”

It was a close thing in the end. They stood beneath the shower head, pressed together chest-to-chest, groin-to-groin, thigh-to-cast and cemented together by the faint suction of the water that dripped onto them. Arthur radiated an intense heat that seared Eames wherever they pressed flesh to flesh. The sound of Arthur’s frantic breathing in his ear. The feel of his slender fingers against Eames’ skin. The knowledge that they both needed this with a desperation that left them too far gone for even the pretence of control. Eames panted and tightened his grip on one taut globe of Arthur’s arse.

“I missed you, Eames,” Arthur whispered against his lips.

Eames came with a shout, clinging to the shower controls as his knees gave out, barely aware of Arthur’s hoarse cry as he followed Eames over the edge.

Eames floated back to the present only when the water began sliding palpably back to freezing. He had one hand still on the shower controls and another wrapped around Arthur, holding them up through sheer strength of will. He turned off the water.

“Fuck. I can’t believe we just had sex with Cobb listening in,” he muttered with a pained laugh. “Arthur, you will be the death of me.”

Arthur smiled and pressed a kiss to his throat, where bones met flesh in a teasing hollow.

“You’re welcome.”

By the time they managed some semblance of recovery and finally emerged from the bathroom, Cobb was, unsurprisingly, long gone. Arthur took the man’s abrupt departure with remarkably little drama, however.

“We should invite him back,” he mused much later, curled against Eames’ side in their ridiculously large, fantastically comfortable bed. “For a vegetarian cook-out.”


End file.
